


Garden of Unearthly Fruit

by Tamoline



Category: Annihilation (2018 Garland)
Genre: Body Horror, Established Relationship, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-28 22:56:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21400012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tamoline/pseuds/Tamoline
Summary: After everything, Lena finds pleasure in gardening. Ventress has her own studies.
Relationships: Lena/Dr. Ventress (Annihilation)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 25
Collections: Femslash Exchange 2019





	Garden of Unearthly Fruit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SadieFlood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SadieFlood/gifts).

Lena finds something satisfying in driving a trowel into soft earth. It’s not something she would have enjoyed before — she had never much been into gardening — but maybe that’s the point. Then versus now. Definite things that she can point to and say ‘There! There’s a difference!’

Well in addition to the obvious.

She has just about repotted the fleshy bulb in a pot the next size up when a pulse of pain flares in her chest. Like always, it isn’t a fixed point, but a writhing, fluttering thing dancing inside her ribs. She stifles a gasp, manages to claw her phone out of her pocket and presses the quick dial button.

“What?” Ventress’ irritated voice comes from the phone speaker. “I’m trying to finish up some reports here.”

“Greenhouse, now,” she manages.

There’s a scraping noise over the phone. “I’m on my way. Huh, this is a little early, isn’t it?”

The pain has metamorphosed into something else, a sensation like fine fibres tickling the inside of her diaphragm and Lena hopes that Ventress will get here quickly, before it reaches the next stage. “I’ll register your complaints with my biology,” she says dryly as she gets to her feet and goes for the kit. She puts it on the table and hops up beside it, pulling her top up and over her head, then laying down horizontally across it. The cold metal presses into her back as she peers downwards.

Already there are colourful nodes moving under the skin. It is progressing quicker than usual,she can’t help noting clinically. She wonders what that means. No doubt Ventress will have her theories. She reaches for the kit and takes a scalpel out. Any longer, and she will have to try and do this herself, regardless of the complications.

Ventress dashes in, the light briefly haloing around her oddly, like the green flash of the sun as it disappears beyond the horizon.

“Ah, I see you’re getting ready to start without me,” she mutters but she’s already taken the scalpel off her. There’s a line of almost pleasure that traces across Lena’s skin as Ventress slices her skin just underneath her ribs. “You are being an active little one, aren’t you?” she notes as she holds Lena down with one hand, puts the scalpel down with the other before sliding her hand softly into Lena. Multicoloured light flashes in front of her eyes and the sheer… indescribable _sensation_ of it all causes her back to arch against the pressure of Ventress holding her down.

Finally it’s over and Lena can see and feel again. Ventress is holding the writhing lump at arms length before gingerly putting it into a metal bowl.“All yours,” she says, washing her hands at the sink before retreating to the house.

“She didn’t mean it,” Lena tells the lump dryly. “Trust me, she’s going to have more than enough questions for you in a few months time.” She watches the incision on her front heal seamlessly, like a pale vicous liquid flowing in to fill a line drawn in it, then hops to her feet. “But don’t worry,” she continues. “Until then, you’re all mine.”

She fetches a small pot, fills it with rich loam and gently plants the seed in it, making sure the nodes are arranged at the bottom, chatting to it as she does so. Ventress has theories about what effects talking may have on new growths, but Lena’s not sure that it’s ethical to experiment on them that way.

Apparently some lessons never quite disappear, no matter how many years or how many miles or how many changes happen. After she settles the latest addition in a nice patch of sunlight, it’s time to check the rest of its siblings, talking to them as she does so, stroking the fleshy pods as she goes.

Touch is such an important sense, after all.

Finally, it’s time to check the older, tougher pods she’s replanted outside, running her hands across their skin, placing her ear against them to listen to the pulse.. She takes a few surface samples, making sure to label where she got them from, as part of her ongoing research project. One has the freckles and the rapid rhythm that indicates it’s ready. An early seeding and a ripening in one day. If Lena were religious, she might consider it a sign.

She walks back to the house at a leisurely pace and pops her head in Ventress’ den. As always, she’s buried in a pile of paper, pen clutched in one hand, lid clenched in her mouth.

It’s certainly nothing that Lena ever expected — like almost everything is these days — but Lena takes a moment to just look at Ventress, mouth twitching around the lid as though she’s having a silent conversation, the pulse of fondness familiar and groaningly human in a way that few other things are. “One of the pods is ripe,” she eventually says and Ventress; head jerks up with an eager glint in her eyes.

“Finally, something to dig my teeth into,” she says.

This stage of things requires a blade more akin to a machete than a scalpel, finding the seam in the woody surface of the pod and levering it open. Reddish clear fluid splashes her feet as she finally pierces the skin and the liquid contents drain away, revealing the curled up form of a pale skinned man blinking up at them. It’s no-one Lena recognises and from the look on Ventress’ face, it’s not someone she knows either.

“Come this way. We’ve got a blanket in the house,” Lena says, offering a hand which he grips and allows her to pull him up. He’s tottering on his legs at first, as they always are. As soon as she has him settled down with a threadbare blanket and a glass of water, Ventress moves in.

“Name, date of birth, place of residence,” she asks brusquely. The man gives Lena a vaguely panicked look, but she shrugs. This is Ventress’ passion project, not hers. “What’s the last thing you remember before here?” Ventress continues when she’s got those answers.

The sky is orange tending towards red as Lena goes to her lab to look at the samples she took today, noting down variations in behaviour, radiance and characteristics. She’s made her own advances in understanding what’s happening to her, happening from her, for all the good it will do. It’s not as though publish or perish is in her present or future.

She’s in bed by the time Ventress finally joins her, consumed as always by new subjects to talk to, to debrief.

“How did it go?” she asks as the bed dips behind her.

“Same old, same old,” Ventress says. “This one’s from Canada.”

The effect is spreading. Lena can’t imagine what it’s like out there now. Just like the man will be gone in the morning, heading out for parts and purposes unknown.

“You’re the only one who’s ever stayed with me,” she tells the warmth behind her. Out of all of them, even people she’s known far better, she would never have predicted that Ventress would be the one to stay.

“How else would I conduct my studies?” Ventress asks dryly, belying her dispassion by wrapping an arm around her.

Lena can feel the lights from the field of planted pods, bulbs and seeds pulsing through the walls, an unseen pressure on her eyes, threatening to carry her away, remake her once again.

“How else indeed?” she murmurs, holding tightly onto the arm, onto this feeling, onto this last part of being human. She doesn’t quite believe Ventress, can’t imagine that there isn’t something she could find in the changing outside world, doesn’t quite believe that the driven woman she’d first met would ever settle like this.

Then again, they’ve all changed since they first met, in ways large and small, and who is she to question Ventress in this? She holds her tighter as she goes to sleep, to wake in the morning to be born anew.


End file.
